


Petunia

by antebunny



Series: In Which [1]
Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: Angst, BAMF Lily Evans, Blood Runes, Family Drama, Fluff, Gen, Made Up Rune Stuff, Muggles, Sister-Sister Relationship, You Can Deal, well I don't really care if you can't, yay Lily!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2018-02-17
Packaged: 2019-03-20 09:08:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13714500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antebunny/pseuds/antebunny
Summary: In which Lily finds a way to teach her sister magic.





	Petunia

Everyone knew that Petunia was jealous of her sister, including Petunia herself. Even before her little sister Lily got her Hogwarts letter, she was jealous of her little sister. _She gets everything!_ Was Petunia’s constant and bitter thought whenever she was asked about her sister, throughout their childhood.

When Lily started showing accidental magic that neither sister understood, Petunia was understandably jealous.

Her sister was the sort of person who got along with everybody. She was pretty, she was smart, and Petunia was neither. Her sister was magical; Petunia was not. Her sister had everything.

And then there was that boy, who told them all about Hogwarts and the wizarding world, and Petunia could tell (even if her sister couldn’t) that he was hopelessly infatuated with Lily—and wanted nothing to do with Petunia.

It was unfair.

Life was unfair, but Petunia had only been a child, and to top everything off, Lily had been the younger sister.

So Petunia never showed her jealousy as jealousy. Even before Hogwarts, she would call it freakish and unnatural whenever she told Lily to stop it.

When Lily went to Hogwarts, the title extended to Lily as well. Both sisters would forever remember the first time Petunia called her sister a freak (and Hogwarts a freak school); the first time Lily had boarded the Hogwarts express.

The summer after Lily’s first year at Hogwarts, Petunia did her best to ignore her little sister or insult her until she went away.

Their parents were far more interested in what freakish tricks her sister had learned at her school than what Petunia had learned.She had come home everyday from school to tell them, but they knew how to solve quadratic functions.

They didn’t know how to turn pine needles into matchsticks—even if Lily wasn’t allowed to do magic outside of school. Their parents would try to arrange a family dinner.

“Can you turn the tablecloth into soup?” Their mother would ask eagerly.

“I could,” Lily said doubtfully. “I mean, I know someone who could—but transfiguration isn’t permanent, so it could turn back into a tablecloth inside your stomach.”

Petunia snuck out halfway through dinner and locked the door to her room.

Half an hour later, Lily followed her upstairs.

“Tuney!” Lily knocked on the door.

“Go away!”

“I just wanted to talk! What’ve you done all year?”

“If you were interested, you’d have asked during dinner.”

“Mum and Dad kept on asking me about Hogwarts!”

“Then go and brag about your precious freak school somewhere else!”

“It’s not a freak school!”

“Yes, it is! And that’s all you are—freaks!”

“You don’t mean that!”

“Go away!”

“Talk to me, Tuney,” Lily begged.

“I don’t talk to freaks!”

 

So instead, Lily spent most of the summer with that Snape boy, rehashing their precious freak school together while Petunia spent the summer alone.

When Lily came back after her second year at Hogwarts, it was much the same. Petunia waited for her sister to leave for Hogwarts, Lily tried to talk to Petunia, their parents wanted to talk with LIly instead about Hogwarts, and so Lily ended up talking to Snape instead.

The third summer was different, Petunia recalled. She remembered once again holing up in her room, while her sister tried, once again, to get her to talk.

“Freaks! You’re all freaks!” Petunia shouted, but quietly enough so that their parents (who were in the kitchen) couldn’t hear her.

“Stop saying that!” Lily said, and Petunia wondered briefly if she was crying. But I don’t care, she told herself. I don’t.

“It’s true! Mum and Dad may be head over heels with their precious magical daughter, but I’m the only one who sees you for who you really are—a freak!”

“I’m not! You’re just jealous!”

Petunia laughed harshly, the word cutting closer than she’d ever admit. “Jealous? You think I’m jealous? How could I be jealous when I despise everything about you?”

She could tell Lily was crying now. “Do you—d’you h-hate me?”

“What’s there not to hate?”

LIly burst into tears again.

“It’s true!” Petunia hurled at her sister. “What did you want me to say? That I don’t? Because I do! I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!” She singsonged.

Lily never noticed that her sister only did that to disguise her own tears.

“Stop it!”

“Then go away!”

“Why don’t you want to talk? We haven’t talked since I first went to Hogwarts!”

“What are we doing right now?”

“Arguing!” Her voice was anguished. “I don’t understand why you hate magic so much, Tuney. You wanted to go to Hogwarts!”

“I did not!” Petunia snapped, cheeks coloring.

“Yes you did! And I’m sorry we looked through your mail, but it’s true!”

“Then find your precious Snape boy and go look through someone else’s!”

“Tuney!”

“GO AWAY!"

A silence, and then Petunia heard Lily’s footsteps retreating down the stairs. Finally, was all she thought, with vicious pleasure.

But Lily was back a few minutes later.

“Go away, Lily!”

“No,” Lily said calmly, albeit with a sniffle. “I’m going to show you magic.”

“You’re not allowed to do magic outside of school!”

“Remember I took Arithmancy and Runes for my electives?”

Yes, she did, and she’d tried to forget it, but the annoying fact stayed.

“Well, I learned Runes,” Lily continued, noting her sister’s lack of insults. “And since it’s not accidental magic or wand magic, the Ministry doesn’t pick it up unless they’re searching for wards. And they won’t be searching for wards.”

And then Petunia heard the knife.

“What are you doing!” She shrieked, forgetting to not care about her sister.

“Stabbing myself,” Lily said simply, but Petunia couldn’t miss the pain in her voice—physical and emotional pain.

“Because if it’s the only way for you to have magic, then nothing’s going to stop me from doing it!”

“I don’t want magic!” Petunia shrieked instantly. “I hate magic!” There was a pause, and then she added, “what do you mean, for me to have magic?”

She couldn’t see the glint of triumph in Lily’s eyes, even as she dug the knife deeper into her skin. “Runes work even if you don’t have magic,” Lily said through gritted teeth, “if you use something magical. My blood,” she added, if that wasn’t clear, and it was those two words that caused Petunia to finally unlocked the door, overwhelmed by curiosity.

Lily didn’t even look up.

Petunia blinked at her younger sister, who was sitting on the floor with several wet paper towels, an inkwell that was half full with Lily’s blood, an inkwell that was half full with regular black ink, two quills, and Lily herself, who was sitting legs folded underneath her and a kitchen knife in her left arm.

“What are you doing?” Petunia shrieked again. “Are you _mental?!”_

“No,” Lily said, again through gritted teeth, as she drew the knife out of her arm and laid it on one of the paper towels.

“You stabbed yourself!”

“For you!”

Petunia gaped at her. And then finally; “why?”

“Because you’re my sister,” Lily said, as if she’d been waiting years to say these words.

So saying, she picked up one quill and dipped it in the inkwell with regular ink (using her non - stabbed arm), and carefully drew on a dry paper towel.

An oval, three lines, a squiggle, and in the center, what looked like two leaves. Lily drew them big so the lines didn’t smudge. Petunia leaned in, trying to see what she was drawing inside of the leaves, when abruptly, all the lines started glowing.

She stumbled back in shock, while Lily calmly put the quill back in the regular inkwell.

And then with her good hand, she picked up the paper towel and pressed it over her wound. Petunia could see the blood seeping through the paper towel, and continued gaping as the lines flared even brighter, a yellow glow that made Petunia look away.

When she looked back, Lily and drawn the paper towel away, revealing an almost closed wound.

Petunia’s legs folded beneath her. “Wh—wh-”

“That was a basic Healing Rune,” Lily said. “I don’t know that many—healing runes, that is.”

She turned fixed Petunia with her bright, piercing green eyes. “And you can do it too! You just need to use my blood.”

“I don’t—I don’t want to touch your blood!”

“You don’t need to. Look-” And Lily guided Petunia’s unresponsive, trembling hand, holding the second quill that had been dipped in Lily’s own blood, and drew a different rune; a jagged line, a circle, and a few short lines, on a different paper towel.

Petunia finally reacted when the rune blazed with light, dropping the quill and trailing blood on the floor. “I—I did that?” She whispered, in shock.

“Yes, you did,” Lily said solemnly. “Do it again!” She urged.

Petunia trembled for a second. She had been saying for years that she didn’t want magic, but now that it was actually possible, she couldn’t help the excitement that coursed through her. And an intense curiosity, that finally drove her to pick up the quill again.

“That was the rune for light,” Lily said as Petunia grabbed the nearest clean paper towel. “It’s the easiest rune—the first one we learned.”

Petunia copied it slowly—circle, jagged line through it, short lines in a semicircle. And she gasped in shock when the blood lines blazed with yellow-white light. “That was me?” She asked her sister. “I did that? I’m a-a-witch?”

“You can do magic,” Lily said, avoiding the question (although Petunia was busy staring at the Light Rune she’d just drawn). “And I’ll teach you,” Lily jumped in, before Petunia’s pride could suffer. “And we’ll save the blood for emergencies, in case we ever need to defend the house.”

Petunia nodded dumbly, staring at the rune, blazing with a dying light.

“And I’ll get my textbooks!” Lily continued, excitement building. “I bought the ones for the next several years—we can go through them together, we can draw wards for the house together! Runes for protection, runes for concealment…say yes, Tuney, please?”

Petunia’s head finally jerked up to stare at her younger sister, her sister who she had mistreated for at least three years by now, and who had stabbed herself to give her the one thing she’d wanted for the past three years. And who only wanted, right now, for Petunia to say yes.

“Yes,” Petunia said finally, choking and stumbling over her own words. “Yes.”

And Lily lunged over the paper towels and ink strewn all over the hallway floor and tackled her sister with a flying hug, laughing and crying and ignoring the dull throb on her left arm where the cut had begun healing.

Because she finally, finally, had her older sister back.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked it, and yes, there will be more!
> 
> Just not about Petunia.
> 
> Sorry.  
> :)


End file.
